One of the great consequences of the Jews being liberated from Egypt was that they would now be able to make decisions. A slave’s life is dictated by his master-when to eat, sleep, work, where to work, and everything else in the day is determined by the master. The Hebrew month of Nissan, the month […]

Imagine if you were miraculously given superhuman power and had the ability to confront an evil monarch, someone who has persecuted, oppressed and murdered tens of thousands of people. How would you approach him? Would you address him in a respectful way or would speak in an insulting and degrading fashion? Whether it was Ivan […]

If you want to know how power effects even our most mundane choices, you need go no further than the “Cookie Monster Study,” done by Dr. Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology at Berkeley. Here’s how he describes it. We bring three people to the lab, and we randomly assign one person to the role of leader. […]

Jacob is on his deathbed and is ready to give his final blessings to his children and grandchildren. When Joseph brings his two sons (i.e. Jacob’s grandsons) for a blessing, Jacob makes the following cryptic remark.And now, your two sons who were born to you in the land of Egypt, until I came to you, […]

Ad Vingerhoets is a professor of psychology at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. The thing that makes him unique is that he is an expert on crying and has spent over twenty years “studying when and why we cry, and how the study of crying may help us obtain better insight into human nature.” According […]